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Meetings Make Us Dumber, Less Creative

February 23, 2007

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I continue to marvel, even though I'm 56 years old and I have a lot of life experiences documenting my instincts are right on the money, I continue to marvel when my instincts continue to be validated. I have long said that the worst thing in life is meetings. Meetings get nothing done. Well, I mean they may get something done, but they stifle creativity. They stifle spontaneity. I don't mean this to be critical of anything. I did my award-winning -- well, it should have won an award, it didn't -- my ratings-champion TV program back in 1992 to '96. Television is a whole different animal than radio. I had a production staff working on the program during the day while I was here working on the big radio program. I had to talk to them in the morning and tell them what I was interested in, what in the news excited me, and they went about trying to find various video clips that would fit, produce various things. When I get over there to the studio after the show, we had to have another meeting. It was a total of probably two hours of meetings to do a 22-minute television show, which is fine. It's the way it is, but I'd not grown up that way in this business. I've never had one meeting with anybody to do this radio program. Not one! I just sit down and do it, and it allows for spontaneity. The problem with these meetings is you don't want to hurt anybody's feelings in the meeting. I've always thought you end up with groupthink. Just to end the meeting, everybody agrees just to get out of there. Well, lo and behold, here's a story from LifeScience.com. ?Meetings Make us Dumber, Study Shows. People have a harder time coming up with alternative solutions to a problem when they are part of a group, new research suggests. "Scientists exposed study participants to one brand of soft drink then asked them to think of alternative brands. Alone, they came up with significantly more products than when they were grouped with two others. The finding could be good news for advertisers who buy spots during big events like the Super Bowl, since consumers often view those commercials with others.? Here's the bottom line. ??When a group gets together, they can miss out on good options,? study team member H. Shanker Krishnan told LiveScience. This could mean ordering from a pizza place advertised on television even if there?s a better option, or making a poor decision in the boardroom. ?Whether it?s with family or a group of co-workers, we could very quickly fixate on things and all come up with the same options,?? just to get out of there! I?ve never been a fan of meetings, which is why when I gave it a stab in the corporate world, I bombed big time. Individuality gets suppressed in a meeting in more ways than one. I'm happy once again to have another instinct validated.